Magic Bus
Yale Cohn
A “history” of tailgating in Iowa City
B
etween the city council’s passage of the “21-Only” ordinance aimed at keeping those under the age of 21 out of Iowa City bars after 10 p.m. and The University of Iowa’s new “Think Before You Drink” initiative aimed at cracking down on tailgating-related drinking, the powers that be are hoping to alter the course of the river of booze that flows through Iowa City. Part of the city’s new ordinance has raised the possible fine for being under 21 in a bar after 10 p.m. to more than $1000. Meanwhile, the fine for possessing a nuclear weapon within city limits is $500. Speaking only for myself, I’d prefer that 19-year-olds were downtown experimenting with new ways to drink tequila rather than at home experimenting with uranium enrichment because, from what I’ve read, radiation poisoning is even worse than a really bad tequila hangover-and much more likely to affect a larger number of people. One might wonder if the council members had been drinking themselves when they came up with this fee structure. This would not be without historical precedent as inebriation, and the oftentimes poor decision making that accompanies it, has been a popular pastime in college towns ever since Oog the Caveman opened the first Division 1 College in the world during the Paleolithic Era over 40,000 years ago. (Based on its enrollment, which was only two, it really should have been a Division 3 school, but people could not count that high at the time.) Oog’s “Learn use club. Learn kill bear. Learn catch women. Learn get job.” curriculum (which we now know as a “Communications 12
September 2010 | Little Village
Degree”) was pretty rigorous for its day. Yet, even then, his students still spent a lot of time trying to alter their consciousness. For the first 35,000 years that humans attended college, this was normally achieved by students hitting each other on the head with their clubs (which is why, to this day, a hangover feels like you’ve been hit on the head with a club; it is a vestigial remnant of the very first hangovers in human history.) Then, around 4000 B.C., the ancient Egyptian god Osiris invented beer to impress a girl, Isis. His newlyinvented drink
dents occurred at 9:15 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 6, 1855--not quite three months after Iowa became the first public university in the United States to admit women and men on an equal basis. It was a bitterly cold night, and a male student who had invited a female classmate back to his meager quarters in a nearby stable to study poured them each a glass of whiskey to help them warm up. What they were really planning to study was each other, but their plans were halted when she unexpectedly shared her whiskey-and the potatoes she had eaten for dinner--with the horses. Her spontaneous act of generosity spooked them, and one horse reared up and stepped on the young man in the place men would least like to be stepped on by a horse, especially while feeling studious. (Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of school, became a minister, and never again touched alcohol, women or horses.) His impromptu gelding inspired the university to launch their first anti-drinking initiativeInebriation, and the helped him woo her, to Drinking”--but it ion -“Nuts and, later--after they was to no avail. oftentimes poor decis ies were married and he More recently, on the west making that accompan learned she was his side of campus, folks who it, has been a popular sister--it was very may have been too drunk useful in helping him to notice the 70,000-seat pastime in college for process this news. stadium they bought homes s. over 40,000 year The very first cover across the street from have charge (so named for started complaining about the fact that their the fee one paid to drink indoors while tak- neighborhood gets swarmed with people when ing cover from swarming locusts) was created the Hawkeyes are playing. (And by “people” shortly thereafter. I mean “people who have been drinking since Oog’s college later became “The University 7 a.m.”) of Oog” when it started offering a post-graduThe city council heard these complaints and, ate degree, “Learn Make Fire,” but not much acting on them, denied the beloved Magic Bus has changed since then, really. a permit to relocate to a new location when its Locally, the first known instance of under- original home changed owners, their lease was age drinking involving University of Iowa stu- not renewed and they wanted to drop anchor a